Currently browsing posts about: Cheerios

It looks like the FDA is finally getting around to looking at the absurd health claims on boxes of breakfast cereals. And about time too, I’d say. For starters, the FDA picked on General Mills’ Cheerios. Cheerios boxes display banners claiming that if you eat this cereal, you will reduce your cholesterol by 4% is 6 weeks (see previous post on this). This, General Mills says, is “clinically proven.” Yes, but the trial on which General Mills bases this claim substitutes one serving of Cheerios for each of two meals a day. Hey – that ought to work!

In its warning letter, the FDA says that if Cheerios lowers cholesterol, it is claiming to work like a statin drug. If Cheerios acts like a drug, it has to be treated like a drug. Cheerios, says the FDA, “is not generally recognized as safe and effective for use in preventing or treating hypercholesterolemia or coronary heart disease. Therefore…it may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application.”

So what’s going on here? I collect cereal boxes and I’m guessing that I bought the one shown here at least two years ago. The boxes have changed since then but similar claims appear on the Cheerios website. Maybe in this new administration the FDA can get a grip on silly and misleading health claims. Let’s hope.

Update May 18: Advertising Age advises marketers about how to avoid FDA interference: know the rules, don’t assume that breaking them is OK even if you have done so for a long time, follow the rules. Seems like good advice.

Update January 18, 2010: At a visit to the FDA last week, I saw a more recent Cheerios box that I somehow missed – lower your cholesterol by 10% in one month. This one disappeared quickly, but I found a good description of what happened on the Consumer World Mouse Print site. General Mills sponsored a study and rushed the box into print.

My neighborhood grocery store is displaying a wall of Cheerios boxes with this banner over the inevitable heart: “You can lower your cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks (see back for details).” I immediately turned to the back to learn that “Cheerios is the only leading cold cereal clinically proven to lower cholesterol. A clinical study showed that eating two 1 and 1/2 cup servings daily of Cheerios cereal reduced cholesterol when eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.” I like Cheerios, but come on? What clinical study? A footnote gives the reference to a study published in Nutrition in Clinical Care (1998;1:6-12). I immediately went to look for it but alas, the journal ceased publication in 2005 and is not available online or in the NYU or Cornell libraries. Want to take a guess at who might have funded the study? If anyone has a copy, please send. The FDA used to be able to demand serious scientific substantiation for health claims like this one, but no more. Congress says one study is sufficient, no matter how old, designed, or paid for. The courts say advertising is a form of free speech and protected by the First Amendment. Caveat emptor.